Golden Age, May 26, 1920
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Golden ? A<5o
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A JOURNAL- OF - FACT (J HOPE AND-CONVICTION J;
Mar 26, 1920, Vol t, No. U Fu&HrAed every otker week at Si Myrtle Ave**e. Mho York. y.T., U.S.A. fBon^h ef Or—Uf*)
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Volume 1 WEDNBSDAT* MAT 38. 1090 Number II
CONTENTS of tfte GOLDEN AGE
Facta - • Negro Negro
SOCIAL tad BDUCATIONAL tod
LA1O1 tad ECONOMICS
About tbo American Negro........;...................:...... 847
Ptstrlbutioo ............847 Negro-Lynching Problems.. 880
Mimtien .. 848 Negro eharactartstlce ........881
awth«n £^^7 m2 SWVjSS.*** 8**tt""s qsosral Negro Advancom't 840 welMVIthors ..................802
lUeoUtouNonb and South MB Nagroea Slaowbero ............553
MANUPACTOBXNO tad MINING Ao Alaskan Cold Tragedy .........—.............^MMMW.,55S
PtNANCB COMMUCI. TBAN8POBTATXOM Trasoporutlon |n Prophecy.—...................—...........Ml
POLITICAL. DOMX8TIC tad YOXtlON . ' Afl Norway Seen It.,^«-----------______--------------
AQJtXCULTUBK end KU8BANDBT
53381515 ssrasau-Ejs: Nat 80 »*"**- •«
HOU8BWIFXSY and HYOIENB Prepared Mt ■ for Ufa.........085 ClaJau to Cura Cancer.
ICIXNC* tad INVXNTXOW wtad Power ................
TBAVSL ead MXICVLLANT Color tod the Compa*e^....Q68 Teo Strong ..............
IVLIOZON ead FRILOSOPKT
The Maric of the Boost.......S8O Va Dey of Judgment ........872
Zionward via Franca..........570 Deliverance (Poom) ...
The Golden Aga....................570 Tell It Out (Poem) .....
XU Liberty........................571 Juvenile Bible Study
tfie Golden Age
Volume I . New York, Wednesday, May 26, 1920 Number 18
FACTS ABOUT THE AMERICAN NEGRO
IN the early years of American colonies 50,000 men were exiled here from England and sold into slavery ranging from a few years to life. The colonists also made slaves of some Indians, but found them hard to manage. The first African slaves were sold in Virginia in 1619, by a Dutch man-of-war, in exchange for provisions. Subsequently Newport and Bristol, R. I. became centers from which regular raids on the African coast were made, and vast numbers of Negroes were seized and brought here into slavery.
Although slavery was forbidden by the constitutions of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, the capital for the Rhode Island slave raids was largely obtained in Boston, and slavery was common in both states. The old North Church in Boston still contains a gallery that was used by the household slaves of some of the families that furnished the capital for the raids in question. The treatment of the slaves varied greatly, depending upon the owners benevolence and the development of the community's conscience. In 1780, in a certain American state, a Negro who had killed a white man was found by Saint-John Crevecceur, confined in a cage and left there to be devoured by the elements and by insects. He was still living when Crevecceur saw him, although his eyes had been destroyed.
..The development of slavery southward was du^to the invention of the cotton-gin, which made cotton a profitable crop, capable of being tilled by slave labor. At this time objection to the evangelization of slaves was raised on the groun^l thpt a baptized slave might claim freedom as a Christian. Slavery in the North gradually became unprofitable; and between 1777 and 1800 Pennsylvania and the states north had abolished it. Those who found it unprofitable could see many reasons why it was unchristian.
By 1850 there were 2,000 f ami lips in therSouth with 100 to as high as 2,500 slaves each, managed by white or colored overseers; and about 350,000 families had smaller numbers, generally managed by the owner himself. Three-fourths of-the whites owned no slaves at all, but defended the institution. Owners and managers varied greatly in character, intelligence and temper, and treated their slaves accordingly. Occasionally the most kind-hearted and easy-going were the least successful and had to sell their holdings, thus causing the heart-rending breaking of family ties. By 1860 one-sixteenth of all slaves had been freed; and many were enjoying full citizenship.
For two centuries the American people as a whole profited by the unpaid labor of the Negro and then set him adrift, ragged unguided and unlettered, to assume the burdens of citizenship and to be further exploited by politicians, to his real injury. But “the chain that holds the slave has its other end fastened to the master"; and the Almighty God of Justice paid the back wages of the slaves in the flood of white blood that .flowed from all parts of a guilty land in the Civil War of 1861-1865.
Negro Distribution
AT the beginning of the nineteenth century the Negro was 19% of the population; at the beginning of the twentieth century, 11.6% of the population; at the present "time, 10% of the population. In every state in the union the proportion of Negroes is slowly decreasing.
Roughly speaking, the black belt is a strip 250 miles wide, beginning at Richmond, Va., and running through Raleigh, N. C.« Columbia, S. C-, Macon. Ga., Montgomery, Ala., Vicksburg, Miss., and Shreveport, La., into eastern Texas. The center of Negro population is in northeastern Alabama, near the city of Chattanooga, Tenn.
There are over 50% Negro population in South Carolina and Mississippi, over 37|% in Georgia, Florida, Alabama and Louisiana, over 25% in Virginia, North Carolina and Arkansas, over 121% in Tennessee and Texas, over 5% in West Virginia, Kentucky and Oklahoma, over 1% in thirteen other states and less than 1% in the eighteen far northern and western states.
In 1910 there wfere living in the United States 473 Negroes who were born in Africa, 100 born in Asia, 94 born in Australia and 61 born in various Pacific Islands. At the same time the occupations of all Negro workers (and these comprise one-seventh of the- total working population of the United States) were:
Agriculture, Forestry and Animal Husbandry-2,893,375 Domestic and Personal Service.------------1,122,231
Manufacturing and Mechanical Industries________631,377
.Transportation (including 37 railroad officials)-255,969 Trade (including 135 bankers and bank officials) 119,491 Professional Service (including 123 chemists, -aseayers and metallurgists, 237 civil and mining engineers and surveyors, 478dentists,
■ 798 lawyers and judges, and 3,077 physicians and surgeons).........-_____________~________________________—.67,245
Extraction of minerals (including 126 mine
operators)61,129 Public Sendee 22,382
Clerical Occupations-___19,336
5,192,535
l
Negro Migration
THE Negro race is not migratory, and therein is much of its value and reliability. However, the World War, which disturbed everything else, disturbed also the Negro. Immigration from Europe ceased, former immigrants returned, and at the close of the war America was short throe million immigrant laborers.
Northern employers were troubled by shortage of labor and high wage demands, and looked toward the South for a possible labor supply. They-<^ent representatives South to find many Negroes whose earnings were small, due to the plant-destroying boll-weevil and to consequent4 unemployment of cotton acreage.
These employment agents promised the Negroes better ^ages, better housing, better education for^the children, better treatment in the courts, and free transportation for themselves and their families if they would come North. Ono large railroad system operating in the South started special trains, notifying the Negroes at each stop that any who wanted to come North might do so without charge. As a result, 500,000 migrated to a climate to which they were unaccustomed, and on account of bad housing conditions died in large numbers.
The factory doors which had hitherto been closed to the Negro opened wide, and to a large extent still remain open, and large numbers of the migrators who formerly worked in southern fields are now engaged iit all sorts of industrial occupations in the North. The plants of seven states, numbering 244 plants in all, into which Negro laborers were introduced during the war were investigated by the Department of Labor as to conditions prevailing during 1918 and 1919 and disclosed a good feeling between whites and blacks in all the plants, with the blacks showing equal attendance and supplying an equal quantity and quality of work.
However, the Northern social organism did not support the sudden influx. At first the new arrivals were crowded into certain sections long recognized as plague-ridden, disease-infected and vice-ruled; but when the new arrivals, as in case of Detroit, increased 500% in five years, those sections could not contain the newcomers, and other sections were necessarily occupied. Declines in real estate values followed; and although these declines were quickly succeeded by recoveries larger than the declines, due to the enormous rents collected from the new arrivals, racial prejudices developed and trouble ensued.
Southern Negro Prosperity
WHEN the Negroes first began to go North not much attention was paid to their exodus in the South. But the size of the migration seriously affected the Southern labor market, increased the shortage of farm products, raised the prices of foodstuffs; and ere long the plant- . । ers and Chambers of Commerce of the South were urging the Negroes to return South to bettered conditions, such as larger wages and gifts of land suitable for homes and gardens.
Meantime, those Negroes who remained in the more fertile parts of the South had fared far better than most of those who went North. Vast numbers of them work on a crop-sharing system; and whore the farm superintendents and operators are honest men, the Negroes have made enough out of the high prices obtained for their products, to lift them completely out of poverty.
There are vast sections of the Mississippi River delta land in the hands of Negroes who have become well-to-do. Many of these farmers have accumulated fortunes ranging from $10,000 to $175,000 and are permitted the full use of sidewalks, streets and thoroughfares.
These lands have produced as high as 500 lbs. of 51-cent cotton per acre, and under such conditions the making of money by an industrious and intelligent man is most natural. One such man, a Negro who had nothing eighteen years ago, now owns 1,600 acres of this land. Nine Negroes have recently clubbed together and bought a tract of 1,200 acres; and twenty-five others have clubbed together and bought a 3,000 acre tract for $225,000, intending to cut it up into 100-acre farms. In one county of Mississippi Negroes possess more than $5,000,000 worth of property and over 2,000 automobiles.
With improved economic conditions the Negro has improved otherwise, has organized an insurance company doing a large business, has employed a farm demonstration agent in one important agricultural center, and has organized various kinds of commercial enterprises in - many places. Among these is a steamship line.
General Negro Advancement
THE percentage of Negroes that own their own homes has increased from 18.7% in 1890 to 23.3% in 1910, and varied in 1910 in the different states as follows:
New York___________7.3
Indiana__
____26.4
District of Columbia—10,8
Missouri ______
__26.6
Pennsylvania___13.3
Colorado ______
____ 27.6
Georgia----14.7
Florida ________
____ 7
Rhode Island____15.2
Oregon ----------
___28.2
Massachusetts----16.2
Texas________
__28.5
Alabama_______16.4
Idaho ............
____28.7
Mississippi___16.9
North Carolina -
_____28.7
Louisiana............,— 17.1
Iowa ___•.....
____29.9
Connecticut--18.1
Ohio________ -
__30.1
Wyoming __________________18.4
New Mexico___
____30.3
South Carolina----18.5
New Hampshire
___30.6
New Jersev_________1S.6
Arizona____
____ 30.7
West Virginia______19.3
Kentucky--
__31.8
Vermont--------20.4
"Washington____
___32.1
Utah________________________21.2
Montana____
__32.3
Illinois-----—...........23.0
Oklahoma--
__35.3
Delaware-----------— 23.2
North Dakota —
____35.6
Nebraska____:---------------24.1
Nevada __________
____ 35.7
Arkansas________1............24.6
California___
____37.8
Minnesota'._________- 24.7
Virginia___.___
__41.3
Tennessee___________25.3
Michigan_____
____44.0
Maryland ............ L 25.6
South Dakota —
__45.1
Wisconsin ---------------25.6
Kansas —________
______49.6
In education the Negroes do not linger so far behind the whites as many suppose. In 1910 the percentage of native whites that spent some time in school was 22.9 and of Negroes 17.0. The percentage of illiteracy is rapidly decreasing; in 1890 it was 57.1; in 1900 it was 44.5 and in 1910 it was 30.4, while for persons between the ages of ten and fourteen it was 18.9. In cities of over 100,000 it was 12.6 and in forty-five American cities of over 100,000 it was 6%.
Race Riots North and South
HE United States has suffered* deservedly in the eyes of intelligent people elsewhere because of the race riots that have disgraced New York City, Philadelphia, Chester, Coatesville, Washington, Norfolk, Charleston, Atlanta,' Knoxville, Memphis, Springfield (O.),, Indiana Harbqr, Chicago, Springfield, (HL), East St. Louis, Omaha, Longview, Houston, Bisbee and other places. At the riot in East St. Louis over forty Negroes were.slaughtered, while at Washington and Chicago it is said that six hundred fatalities occurred. Outnumbered ten to one, the Negro stands no chance in a race riot, and resistance only increases the fury of the mob that has allowed race prejudice to sweep it off its feet for a time.
' The temper of these mobs was shown in the nine-hour battle at Omaha in which a mob of thousands determined to lynch one Negro offender, stormed the county jail, located on the fifth floor of the Court House, scaled the walls by rope ladders, burned the lower floors with all their precious records, damaged the building to the extent of $1,000,000, forced the surrender of the prisoner, shot him to death, dragged his body by hand and by automobile through the streets, kicked, hanged and finally burned it. And all this time American churches send missionaries to China instead of Nebraska.
The mob seized $50,000 worth of arms from hardware establishments, burned a patrol wagon, took the rope meant for the Negro and threw it over the mayor's head, dragged him a block, threw the rope over a trolley polo and twice hauled him from the ground, and would have hanged him had not police officers cut the rope. It fired repeatedly at the 121 helpless prisoners assembled on the roof of the burning building, and was subdued only by the arrival of national troops. .
Of a different nature was the trouble near Helena, Ark., having its origin apparently in the dishonesty of certain farm superintendents or operators who refused to give the Negro farmers the large profits which the high prices of cotton had enabled them to earn. These farmers work for a share of the crops; they furnish all the labor, the superintendent or operator.of the farm furnishing everything else. This arrangement works well or ill, depending upon the honesty of the supervising white man who has the farm in control.
In- some places these white men have taken advantage of the Negroes, forcing them to turn over all their cotton in payment for supplies which, in instances, have amounted to but a mere fraction of the value of the cotton, and refusing to give settlements or statements of account. For example, a case is cited where a Negro worked 27 acres for a year and produced six bales, of cotton, his share of which was $753. In lieu of a settlement he was charged $52.60 for freight charges for removing nine small articles 100 miles and $700 for groceries which could not have been worth more than $150; and when he made objection was ordered off the place, penniless, with nothing for his year's work.
At a point below Helena where the Negro population ia largely predominant, a number of Negroes, acting under white legal advice, formed an association for mutual legal protection and were preparing to bring legal action against certain white landlords. It is admitted that these Negroes were hard-working farmers, considered the best class of Negroes in the South. It is also admitted that their association, while organizing, had armed guards about the building or buildings where the meetings were held, or at any rate that in the meeting there were mon who were armed.
While one of these meetings was in progress, an automobile containing a white deputy sheriff and others in search of a revenue violator had a tire hurst in front of the house. This was probably mistaken for a shot and was answered by a shot from the house, the beginning of a small-sized war, in which, within the next few days, twenty-five blacks and five whites were killed, and others wounded.
Within d* few more days forty-eight Negroes were sentenced to death or penal servitude without any witnesses in their defense being called. Twelve of these were sentenced to death, and six of the twelve were sentenced to the gallows in a total of seven minutes time. Ten were sentenced to twenty-one years, and eleven were given one year for night-riding. It is claimed that the accused men were provided with the best available local white lawyers. They were tried before a white jury, blacks being excluded from jury duty in that section.
Negro-Lynching Problem*
X-Attorney General Gregory of Texas said* of lynching:
■ "Lynch law is the most cowardly of Crimea. Invariably the victim is unarmed, while the men who lynch are armed and in large numbers. It is a deplorable thing under any circumstances.*’
Henry Watterson, Editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal says:
‘^Lynching should not be misconstrued. It is not an effort to punish crime. It is a sport which has as its excuse the fact that a crime, of greater or less gravity, has been conmmitted or is alleged. A lynching party rarely is made up of citizens indignant at the law's delays or failures. It often is made up of a mob bent upon diversion, and proceeding in a mood of rather frolicsome ferocity to have a thoroughly good time. Lynchers are not persons who strive from day to day toward social betterment. Neither are they alwaya drunken ruffians. Oftentimes they are ruffians wholly sober in-so-far as alcoholic indulgence is concerned, but highly stimulated by an opportunity to indulge in spectacular murder when there ia no fear that the grand jury will return murder indictments against them.”
In the thirty years, 1889-1918, lynching mobs murdered 3,224 persons in the United States, of whom 2.522 were Negroes and 702 were white persons. Of the Negro victims fifty were women, and of the whites eleven were women.
What a lynching is like in Christian America may be gathered from the following account taken from the Chattanooga Times:
"Jim Mcllherron, the Negro who shot and killed Pierce Rodgers and Jesse Tigert, two white men, at Estill Springs last Friday, and wounded Frank Tigert, wfcs tortured with a red-hot crowbar and then burned to death here tonight at 7:40, by twelve masked men. A crowd of approximately 2,000 persons, among whom were women and children, witnessed the burning.
"Mcllherron, who was badly wounded and unable to walk, was carried to the scene of the murder, where preparation for a funeral pyre was begun.
"The captors proceeded to a spot about a quarter of a mile from the railroad station and prepared the death lire. The crowd followed and remained throughout the horrible proceedings. The Negro was led to & hickory tree, to which they chained him. After securing him to the tree a fire was laid. A short distance awav another tire was kindled, and into it was put an iron bar to heat.
•‘When the bar became red hot a member of the mob jabbed it toward the Negro's body. Crazed with fright, the black grabbed hold of it, and as it was pulled through his hands the atmosphere was filled with the odor of burning flesh. This; was the first time the murderer gave evidence of his will being broken. Scream after scream rent the air. As the hot iron was applied to various parts of his body his yells and cries for mercy could be heard in the town,
“After torturing the Negro several minutes one of the masked men poured coal oil on his feet and trousers and applied a match to the pyre. As the flames rose, enveloping the. black's body he begged that he be shot. Yells of derision greeted his request. The angry flames consumed his clothing, and little blue blazes shot upward from his burning hair before he lost consciousness.”
Of another Sunday morning lynching in the center of a Christian city of 7,000 population in the same state and not greatly unlike similar occurrences at Coatesville, Pa., and Springfield, Ill., the Memphis News Scimitar said:
"Not a domino hid a face. Every one was unmasked. Leaders were designated and assigned their parts. Long before the mob reached the city the public square was choked with humanity. All waited patiently. Women, with babies, made themselves comfortable.
“'At last the irons were hot.
“A red streak shot out; a poker in a brawny hand was boring out one of the Negro's eyes. The Negro bore the ordeal with courage, only low moans escaping him. Another poker was working like an auger on the other orbit.
"Swish. Once, twice, three times a red hot iron dug gaping places in Lation Scott’s back and sides.
“ ‘Fetch a hotter one,’ somebody said. The execution went on. .
“Now some one had another poker—jabbing its fiery point into the ribs of the doomed black.
"‘Then rubbish was piled high about the agonized body^-squirming beneath its load.
"More and more wood and rubbish were fed the firp, but at three o'clock Lation Scott was not dead. Life finally fled at four o’clock.
•‘Women scarcely changed countenance as the Negro's back wa£ irofied with the hot brands. Even the executioners maintained their poise in the face of bloody creases left by the irons—irons which some housewife had been using.
"Three and a half hours were required to complete th? execution.*’
In the year 1919 there were 78 blacks and 6 whites lynched in the United States—22 in Georgia,-12 in Mississippi, 10 in Arkansas, S each in Alabama and Louisiana. Of the remaining number 9 were in Northern states and 15 in various Southern states. Eleven of these were burned to death, two beaten to death and one cut in pieces. Ten of them were soldiers in the World War. Thirty-four of them were taken from officers and jails in fourteen states, me causes of lynching were as follows:
Murder 27
Assault on white _ _
Attempted assault on white woman
Insulting white woman-------------------—.....--------------
Intimacy with white woman--;
Attempting to pull white woman from horse
Shooting white man
Assault on white man ......................—
Altercation with white man
Beating and robbing white man
Found under bed in white man’s house , .
Not turning out of road for white boy in auto. . J
Misleading mob - _ ■ - ........- ■ -
Insulting white man . .......— —
Boastful remarks re kill ing of «hari-ff
Result of race rinf -
Talking of Chicago Riot —
Expressing himself too freely re lynching of Negro,. 1
Leader among Negroes_____•-------------■ ■■
Circulating incendiary literature ■■■■—
Member of Non-Partisan League—
Trouble between white and colored cotton mill workers 1
Abetting riot __________.....,.
Causes unknown _________________ ■■
T otal_______ ■ ,
Negfra Characteristics
IT is claimed by some that during the World
War the Negroes though constituting but ten percent of the population, supplied fifteen percent of the soldiers, thus taking the places of others exempted. We do not know the facts of this assertion, but we do know that when the richest man in America would surround his home at night with the most trustworthy guards that his means could provide, he chose colored men for the task; and the faithfulness of Negroes has endeared them to true Americans in all ages. An instance of their reliability was brought to light in one of the Northern race riots in 1919, when a Negro policeman shot another Negro for firing at a white policeman.
The Negroes arc peaceful and law-abiding.
They have never been accused of night-riding and lynching. They have shown that they can ’ suffer without becoming embittered, and can forgive those who have done them wrong. As a race they are happy, gentle, affectionate and humorous; and most of them are honest and industrious. To be sure they have faults; but so have others. Those who have had the freedom of the homes of the southland for a hundred years have seldom betrayed their trust.
Ten years ago an old colored man of some means and education, acting as Santa Claus for the Confederate Soldiers Home at Atlanta, Ga., found there his old master, Thomas M. Yopp, whom he had rescued from the field of battle and nursed back to strength fifty-six years before. Since finding him this Negro has visited the Soldiers Horae annually at Christmas time on the same errand. Moved by this example of love and faithfulness, the Georgia legislature has provided funds to carry on the work; and the Governor of the state and other officials were present at the last Christmas celebration.
The Negro and The South
WHILE the social attitude of the South toward the Negro is one of aloofness, it is not more so than in the North; and it is a , significant fact that in the South it is generally recognized that there are many good Negroes and few bad ones, and that the good ones are valuable and useful citizens. Mobs in the South -never, as in the North, vent their anger against the colored people as a whole.
The South is still suffering from the effects of the Civil War; and although she has not done for the Negro all that could be wished, yet she is constantly doing something; and in sections where the races have known each other for generations, and where the Negroes own property and the whites are educated, there is seldom any trouble between them.
The best lawyers in the South still keep up practice on both the civil and the criminal side * of the court. In many localities Negroes are sure of a fair trial, and there are instances where they have been defended from mobs with the greitest\ courage. The whites always aid the colored churches and are always glad to speak in them when requested. The best type of Southerner tries to be just to the Negro and to avoid pampering him. *
Hopes of Negro Well - Wishers
THE Negro educators of North Carolina met and proclaimed a platform condemning all advocacy of social equality with ‘ the whites, : intermarriage of the races and all attempts to settle racial disputes by violence.
Dr. George Cleveland Hall, a prominent Chicago Negro; says:
“Our enemies always emphasize social equality. But you will notice we put the strong pedal on economic and political equality. Let us have these and social equality will take care of itself.”
Negroes Elsewhere ••
SAD as are the injustices visited upon the
Negro in America; and horrible as are the atrocities which an honest examination of the subject compels one to mention, yet America is i today the best country for the Negro, and the \ race has made greater progress here than under any other government on earth. J
It is claimed that the Negroes of Cape Colony, :
South Africa, who are of exactly the same type .
as American Negroes, are allowed to do only menial labor, for which they receive an equiva-v : lent of 37$ cents per day. They may travel only '' on a pass and on the streets called for by the pass, and only at the time called for in the pass, a pass being required for every movement from one locality to another.
Change of employment cannot be made without the written consent of the previous employer. Married women cannot live with their husbands without paying a special tax of one shilling per month. Natives pay the same taxes as whites and special taxes in addition, but the children of black taxpayers are rigidly excluded from the schools. Since 1913 it is a criminal act for a native to buy real estate from a white owner, whites being allowed to sell only to other whites. .
The remedy for the injustices the Negro has suffered, and still suffers, is the same remedy that the Lord has reserved for the downtrodden of every race and clime. It is the coming of Messiah’s kingdom of wisdom, justice, love and power, which will remove all the disabilities under which every race and class of human beings suffer, lifting up from poverty to wealth, from ignorance to enlightenment, from sorrow to joy, from weakness to strength, from sickness to health and from death to life. Lord, hasten the day of thy kingdom!
MANUFACTURING AND MINING j
With my husband I was in the great rush of thousands to the Alaskan gold fields during the summer of 1S98; and I here condense some items from my journal which may be of interest to readers of The Golden Age. —Bertha Bene,
An Alaskan Gold Tragedy IX the summer of 1897 we turned all our property into eash and went to Port Townsend, Washington, where we formed a company of seventeen persons, composed of sixteen men and one woman. We built and fitted out a small boat, The Elk, and with high hopes sailed away on June 11, 1898. It was the irony of fate that out of that company only one-third are known to have been alive a year later, and one of them a woman, who at that time weighed less than one hundred pounds and who escaped as by a miracle.
Early on the morning of June 24 we first saw the Aleutian Islands just above the horizon, after having been out of sight of land for thirteen days. As we neared the Islands we -passed reefs, in one place sailing between rocks which did not appear to be more than fifty feet apart. But the captain thought we could make the passage safely, as we did not draw more than six feet of water, whereas if we went around it would take us a good many miles out of our course. If a storm had come up at this time we would most certainly have been sent to the bottom.
A little later, after passing through Unimak Pass into the Bering Sea, a terrible storm came on, accompanied by a dense fog. The supply of coal became exhausted, the men mutinied and threatened to hang the captain, and Mr. Bens the engineer. They sawed up the lumber which we had brought with us to make sluice boxes, and for which we had paid a big price, to keep the fires going under the boilers, tore the mattresses from the beds, soaked their contents with kerosene and fed them to the flames, together with a ton of the pork we had brought with us as food. When the storm abated and the fog lifted, it was discovered that the boat was in the same position as when the storm began, ^hereupon the mutineers returned the boat to the'captain's control. In a week he brought^ux under sail into Dutch Harbor.
Dutch Harbor is in the Aleutian Islands, SOO miles direc tly south of Bering Strait, and about two thousand miles almost due west from Port Townsend. The town is situated at the foot of a low hill on a stretch of level land running along the beach, and in front of it is a small bay, both entirely surrounded by high green mountains, so that a glimpse of the ocean is caught at a certain point in the bay. The mountains had not a tree or a shrub on them, but were covered with a growth of beautiful wild flowers and moss about a foot thick, and looked greener to me than any green thing I had ever seen.
After three days in Dutch Harbor, laying in coal and water, we sailed again, July 7, straight north through the Bering Strait, on up past the Arctic Circle, and into Kotzebue Sound, where we engaged Indians to pilot our ship up the Selawik River. We landed in the Sound, July 14, and had hardly dropped anchor before a half dozen Indians boarded us.
The Indians knew very little English, but were friendly and always hungry. They had no use for the knives, forks and spoons laid before them, but saw only the victuals the cook had placed on the watertank on deck. This was round and about four feet high; some climbed on top while others stood around, and a dozen brown hands were stretched out at the same time to grab what they could, a piece of bread or meat with one hand, and a quantity of beans with the other. They conveyed the food to their mouths in the way that suited them best, and then wiped their hands on the front of their parkies or outer shirts, much as a two-year-old child would that had been taught no better.
When the men tried to teach them to feed themselves with fork and spoon, they would hold the fork in the fist, thrust it into a piece of meat, hold it up in the air, take the meat off the fork with the fingers and convey it to the mouth. When trying to feed themselves with a spoon, the spoon would frequently turn upside down just before it reached the mouth. This method of eating did not satisfy them after they had tried it once.
Both men and women chew tobacco, and it seems as if they cannot get enough. They do not chew as does a white man, but put a piece
an inch square into their mouths, suck it and swallow the juice, so that nothing is lost. If they get tired sucking, or if they take it out to eat something, they stick it behind the right ear until they want it again.
The old Indian who served as our pilot up the Selawik brought with him his whole tribe, his children and grandchildren, and a few near relatives, thirty-five in number, not counting the dogs. The sleds of some of these Indians were sixteen feet long, with runners of solid ivory, some spliced while others were all of one piece, evidently from mastodons. The straw mats which they make of dried swamp grass, braided and sewed together, would be an ornament to any modern home.
In the winter the Indians build fires in their huts twice a day, seldom using more than an armful of sticks for either fire. When the fire is nearly out the coals are covered up with ashes, and the hole in the roof is covered with a clarified skin. The hole through which they crawl into the hut is covered in the sam^ way. This affords the women ample light to sew by, and they do some very fine work on their footwear. In the morning they warm their bodies by taking off the upper garments, and the children take off all the clothes they have on.
We found the Indians in this part of Alaska strictly honest. We could trust them in or out of sight. We never thought of such a thing as locking our doors when we left the camp, even to be gone all day, and never missed anything or found anything disturbed, although it was not uncommon when returning to camp to find a dozen of them stretched out on the cabin floor so thickly that it was almost impossible to get around them without stepping on them. They soon learned the hours for meals and were around promptly on time, and sometimes for a week or more at a time, before they proceeded on their journeys. Many of these Indians were Chrisftans, converts from the Quaker mission , in Kotzebue Sound.
A young Indian cannot get married until he is the happy possessor of a good blanket. This he then throws over the girl of his choice, while running a|ter her; and if she allows him to catch her, she thus gives consent to become his wife. They then live together for a time, after which, if no one objects and both are satisfied, they are considered married. If, on the other hand, they do not agree, or do not care to live together for life, they simply part, going their own ways.
If more female children are born than are desired, they are neglected at birth, with consequences fatal to the child and frequently to the mother. Polygamy and polyandry are unknown. The natives are peace-loving and peaceable; they do not quarrel with one another. They are bright and learn rapidly. ’ One young man who visited our cabin learned all the letters of the alphabet, and to read and write his name, in two days.
Among the Kotzebue Indians the summer seems to be the season for hunting game of a special kind, judged from what occurred while the Elk was on its way up the Selawik. Men and women took off a garment at a time, their costumes consisting of but two pieces, trousers and parka (loose shirt), hunting for what they could find, and evidently expecting to find something. As fast as they found the game they put it into their mouths. A favorite method was to put one end of a seam into the mouth, biting and : 1 running to the end of the seam, destroying and -f swallowing anything in the way of animal life that might be so unfortunate as to be on the track of the ivory crushers' that were running them down.
The girls are very good-looking up to about fifteen or sixteen years, at which time they are usually married. They age very rapidly after j that; and within a few years it is almost impos-sible to judge their ages, and they keep no age records of any kind.
The Indians carried with them walrus-hide boats, decked over entirely except a place in the middle large enough to receive the hips, the feet being stretched out under the covered part. Although these kayaks, as they are called, are . so light that an Indian carries them as easily as ' a gun, and so small that a white man can scarcely keep himself right side up in one of them, yet the Indians seemingly take as much comfort in them as a white man does in a rocking-chair. They use a single paddle, with a blade at each end, dipping the water first on one side and then on the other, and speeding through it like an arrow.
The Indians drink large quantities of -water. Before starting on a journey I have seen four or five of them drain the contents of a common wooden water-bucket, filled for the purpose only ‘ t a few minutes before. And the first thing they ’ j
ask for after coming in from a journey is a drink of cold water.
In the spring large quantities of salmon are caught and dried for winter use. The backbone is removed, and the fish hung in the sun. There are no flies to “blow" or infect them; and ifi a short time the flesh becomes as dry and hard as a chip of wood. No salt is used in the drying process, the air furnishing all the curing properties required.
Their sepulchres are log cribs built on posts high enough from the ground so that a man can walk under them. Into one of these the body is put with all its earthly belongings, gun, knife, blanket and other possessions,. all safe from molestation. In a year's time there is nothing left of the body but the bones, and it is claimed that this is entirely due to the action of the air.
As we went up the Selawik we saw vast reaches of the so-called tundra for which Alaska is famous. The ground is covered with a dense growth of grass and moss which looks smooth as a lawn, and yet it is almost impossible to travel over. This accounts for the winter travel described later in this article. The grass forms large stools, which mat together with holes between them filled with water often more than two feet deep. Large quantities of blueberries and some cranberries, salmon berries and red currants grow in the tundra.
The tundra is the breeding-place of the mosquitoes about which every writer on Alaska has had much to say. When disturbed these insects fly in swarms so thick that it is difficult to breathe without swallowing them, and their incessant attacks almost drive a person frantic.
While we were on our way up the Selawik ten of the men went ahead on a prospecting trip, returning in a few days much discouraged, with hands, feet and faces badly swollen with mosquito bites, with no gold, and nothing to encourage them to look for it. Five of these ten men had had enough and went back down the Selawik from here, eventually finding their waj” back to the States in safety.
Although on the edge of the Arctic Circle the country hereabout was dotted with clusters of straight, slender spruce trees, some of thorn sixteen^ to eighteen inches through at the butt. This wqod is very soft and has little strength when dry. From the earliest growth of the tree the limbs all start from the heart, making it difficult to split
On September first, the Elk was run into a little lake near the head waters of the Selawik, there to winter. Had she remained in the open channel she would certainly have been crushed when the ice floated out in the spring. Meantime my husband and I had made a box-shaped boat to hold our belongings, and were now ready to set forth to make our fortunes.
I asked the cook for our share of the dishes to keep house with; and he gave me one granite * plate, one small tin plate, two tin covers from lard buckets, one tablespoon, one knife, one fork and a five-pound lard bucket half full of meat fryings. When I told him this was hardly enough dishes to keep house with, he told me that he could spare no more and that I might take them or leave them. To supplement these we had two old paint buckets, two gold-pans and a little sheet-iron kettle, but no stove, although my husband afterwards made one from two large tin cans that he obtained by trading.
We left the Elk on Septemlier ninth; and during the ensuing winter, every person on board died of the scurvy, and strangers came and took possession of the vessel.
From reports received from other prospec, tors we determined to try our success in the head waters of the Tagragawik, which flows into the Selawik from the north. The current of this river is very strong, and it was possible for us to ascend the stream but thirty miles. This required fourteen days of the hardest kind of work, most of it in a cold rain that chilled us to the bone.
At one place we came to a rapids that it seemed impossible to cope with. But it was a case of do or die. My husband and I shook hands as old friends might do before going to battle. I went aboard our box and took my sear at the helm, while my husband took the towline. Soon we were in the edge of the boiling rapids. My husband was in the water above his knees with the tow-line over his shoulder, and stepping along as if he were making good time. But for at least ten minutes we made not an inch of headway, as I could distinctly see by the rocks in the water.
I dared not swing our boat in shore further for fear that she would grind on the rocky bottom; for we had about a ton of goods on board, besides my own weight. My husband dared not look around for fear of losing his footing. I feared that our tow-line would break under the terrible strain; and if it had done so, our lives would have been the forfeit. Finally I turned the box in a trifle toward the shore, and to my glad surprise the craft slowly moved up stream. In ten minutes more we were safely ashore, my husband drenched and shivering with cold in the raw wind. A little later I was thrown into the water and similarly drenched.
We finally reached the little mining settlement or prospectors’ settlement which we christened Smoky Point; and there with seven other prospectors we built log-cabins, surrounded by stockades packed full of boughs, intended to shield the cabins from the full blasts of the Arctic winter. I helped cut the logs with a crosscut saw, and learned that a ■woman less than five feet tall can do many things she would not ordinarily think possible. We chinked the large logs with smaller ones and packed the interstices with moss. Our first stove was made of cobble stones laid in mortar made of mixed sand and clay. We moved in on October fourth.
Along with the other prospectors we started to sink a hole in the ground, looking for gold. In about two months several of the holes had struck bedrock, with very little indications of gold and nothing to justify further effort in that vicinity. The thermometer was now around 30° below zero. A little later it was 56° below.
Shortly after New Years the men in our party began to plan to leave the country by crossing the mountains to the Koyukuk River, a branch of the Yukon, and descending that stream to its junction with the Yukon. They began practicing to see how much they could haul on a sled, and were very much surprised at first to find how little they could haul. Most of them started with one hundred pounds. A few of them took this about five miles, while others began lightening up after making the first mile. After weeks of practice they could haul a load of two hundred pounds. The goods were all put up in packages marked with the weight, so that they knew just hownpich they had in a load. The men worked in harnesses which they made for the purpose.
Early in the winter the snow was like sand, caused by extremely cold weather. This snow goes through the heaviest clothing like water through a sieyo. In the midst of a storm a man cannot sq$ three feet ahead of him, and without shelter would freeze in a short time. Travel was impossible until these storms had ceased and the wind had packed down the snow.
Just before leaving Smoky Point my husband made a trip back to the Elk to obtain the last of our supplies. When he started it was 20b Wow zero. This weather did not seem so severe to us, by this time, having become somewhat inured, to the cold, so my husband took no extra clothing with him, not even an overcoat; for he said this would hinder him in his travelling. He made the round trip of sixty miles, and returned alive, but there is no doubt that the great exposure and fatigue "were the direct cause of his death; for he never saw a well day after his return. The round trip required six days, and during part of that time the thermometer was 50® below zero.
During the latter part of January and the early part of February the men carried our goods, little by little, over the mountain range, into the camp selected on the other side, some thirty miles away. Some of this work was done with the thermometer standing at 65® below zero. When the last of our goods had gone, and the camp was deserted, my husband came down with the scurvy. For a few days I doctored hinr< with remedies specially prepared for the purpose, but the time came when we must rejoin our goods or perish. So on February 27th, a bright morning, with the thermometer at 52* below zero, we started out for our return to civilization. We engaged an Indian and dog team to make the trip with us.
I did not ride, but led the dogs, going before them and keeping up a little dog-trot, the same as the Indian women do, to encourage them. It was all up hill for many miles, and the cold air and high altitude made breathing very difficult. Travelling became more tedious. I suffered intense pain, and finally I could not raise my feet over the little lumps in the path. My husband rode a little; but the strength of all the party, except the Indian guide, was completely exhausted by the time we reached the summit of the pass. Our first camp was but a short dis-4tance down the eastern slope. We slept in a tent made of eight-ounce duck, wrapped in all the blankets we possessed, but scarcely lost consciousness during the night.
I think I suffered more pain that night than ever before in my life. I could not lie on my side at all, and once on my back could not raise a hand or foot without suffering the most excruciating pain in the muscles of the whole body. I never knew before what the expression ‘’bitter cold” meant, but I realized it then in that tent; for when I took off my mittens and the air struck my hands it felt as if red pepper had been sprinkled on them. Our Indian went back to Smoky Point from there * promising to return after five sleeps to help us farther on our journey. Only three white men were now in our party, aside from my husband, the others having determined to try to fight their way back to the States by the Selawik route.
My husband now took to his bed, and from that bed never arose. I had to learn to chop wood, and finally became quite expert at it. After two days in this camp I was taken with pleurisy. If I had been anywhere else than in that wild country I would have considered myself sick and sent for a physician; but I doctored myself as best I could and kept on with my chopping. The three well men were busy carrying the tilings of the party forward to the next camping place. It was three weeks before we broke pamp, but we finally started on a bright morning with the thermometer standing at 43° /below zero. This time my husband was forced to make the entire journey on the sled.
As we came down the mountainside the country before us presented a beautiful picture, glittering in the sun as if sprinkled with millions of diamonds, large and small, with not a breath of wind1 nor a sound to break the awful stillness. Surely this was nature in death, and I could not help thinking of a beautiful, white, spotless corpse. Everything was so cold, so pure, so maddening and yet so fascinating. We reached the eamp of the three men, on a tributary of the Little Koyukuk: and they helped us set up our tent, after which they went on down the stream to find a better place in which to launch the boats as soon as the ice should go out. The place where they finally pitched their tents was fully nine miles away; but they told me it was about two miles, so as not to make me feel that they were too far away. At intervals of a week or so they visited us to see how we fared. Had I fallen sick in the periods between their visits we would both have perished in a short time, as the thermometer was frequently around 50° below zero, although it was now nearing the first of April.
My djiys were spent in rutting wood and in caring f$r my husband. At night I tucked him up well in the blankets and crawled in beside him to keep him as warm as possible. We both wore heavy woolen caps and mittens, fur socks and extra coats in bed, and covered our heads with the blankets. This was cumbersome, but we had to do it or freeze before morning. After sleeping about two hours we usually awoke aching with the cold, often not being able to go to sleep again; for as scoii as the fire was out it was as cold in the tent as it was out doors.
When I got up in the morning our blankets, which were dark brown, were as white with frost as if it had snowed" on them during the night. I dreaded getting up and building a fire worse than staying up all night and keeping one. When I first pulled off my mittens to hold a match to the kindling-wood, it felt like holding the hands in a red-hot furnace. Often I made two or three attempts before I succeeded in getting the fire to burn, blowing in my hands and rubbing them, to soften them so that I could hold a match.
The timber here was not more tlwm seven or eight inches through, and most of it not more than three or four inches. The trees are covered with branches from ground to top, all growing downward, so that the branches must be trimmed off while the tree is yet standing before it can be felled. The upper branches are full of thousands of small cones. Had I hut known it, a tea made of these cones would have saved my husband’s life: but alas! there was nobody there to tell me, and it was not until many weeks afterward that the same remedy was used to bring me back from the edge of the grave.
I could cut only from eight to ten trees in a day, besides getting our meals and taking care of my sick husband. That amount of wood, when cut in stovewood lengths, would keep us warm for forty-eight hours. I gathered it one day and cut it up the next, so that I always had one day's wood ahead. I dared not think what would become of us if I should get sick for only one short day, or if a very severe storm should set in.
Our stove made of old tin cans was not all that could be desired. Sometimes the wind would blow the flames and ashes out of the front of the stove and so fill the room with smoke that we could scarcely see or breathe. To add to our troubles the wnd blew burning sparks on to the tent, so that there were now thirty-six small holes in it. When the wind blew it was not safe for me to leave the tent for a minute.
On one occasion the stovepipe was down in the morning; and almost as fast as 1 put it up, the wind blew it down again. I tried to build a fire; but the wind blew the fire and ashes out of the front of the stove, and I had to give it up and go back to bed again. I tried it again in the afternoon, with no better results than in the morning. The wind grew fiercer every minute and roared down the mountain like a wild animal. We had nothing to eat all day, not even a drink of water; for everything was frozen solid.
The following day was the same as the day before. Again I tried to start a fire, and again I failed. We were, oh! so cold now, and hungry too. At three o'clock in the afternoon the wind died down somewhat, and I succeeded in starting a fire, although it smoked terribly. I managed to cook some oatmeal and a cup of tea, after a long time; for I had first to melt snow to get water for this. After eating and drinking we felt better, and let the fire go out, to get rid of the blinding smoke, and went back to bed.
The long and intense cold made my sore side ache; the blankets were so heavy that I could hardly turn over under them; and the fir boughs under us were getting badly worn, so that the knots and ends were sticking up all over and made lying on them very uncomfortable. The weather lasted from the sixteenth of April up to noon of the twenty-first, during which time we had only three meals. All this time we spent in bed and without a fire. It was too cpld to talk; we had no need of sleep; death would have been a relief.
Early in May, as I was closing up the outside work for the day, and bringing in the last armful of wood, I saw the most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen. There were four in one. Of these one was a perfect horseshoe, rising and setting on the same mountain. The second, a little higher up, was also perfect from base to base, as was the third, still higher. The fourth was like a horseshoe turned upside down, in the center of the upper two, and touching both. They were as perfect as if painted on canvass.
Winter does not last forever, even in Alaska? and we had days early in May when the thermometer rose to 50° above zero at midday, with not a breath of air stirring and a dead silence reignifig oyer the mountains as they lay glistening in_Xhe warm sunshine.
I will spare the reader the account of the death of my husband which followed, his days and nights ot’ delirium, the gradual encroachments of the terrible plague of scurvy which finally brought his troubles to a peaceful end a little after midnight, May 15th, 1899. I am grateful that he had a few days of sunshine to ease his last moments; but they were hard days for me, aiid his cries for milk, eggs, apples and other things impossible to secure within two thousand miles, will ring in my ears forever.
At one o'clock in the morning I fastened up the tent door well, so that nothing could get in, and started in a straight line in the direction in which I had been informed our neighbors had pitched their camp. It was freezing a little, and I thought the snow would hold me up. But I had not gone twenty steps before I was compelled to turn back; for every step I got in deeper, until I sunk in above the waist
I returned to the tent and got my husband'^ snowshoes, but they were not ready for use, not being slung. So I got some cord that we had for the purpose, tied them on and left the tent again, taking nothing with me, not even a bite to eat, and I had eaten nothing but one* small biscuit since Thursday morning, and this was Monday.
The first few miles I made good time, ntff breaking through oftener than every third or fourth step, and not falling down oftener than once in five minutes. This was the first time I had ever travelled on snowshoes, and I did better than I had expected. I walked fast, trying to run away from myself. My heart beat rapidly, my eyes and cheeks burned and my brain whirled like mad. I dared not stop a minute, fearing that I might be tempted to turn back. So on, on, I went toward the East, over the hills and through the brush, with not even the sun to guide me; for heavy black clouds were coming up that hid the sun.
It was now getting warmer and the snow was getting softer, so that every step I broke through, six or eight inches and the front of the snowshoes slipped under the crust. They often became untied because I could not fasten them on right, or the heel or toe would slip out because they were too large. And now and then the ice would cut the strings, so that I had to take them off entirely and mend them. At such times I dared not look around; for I could not trust myself. Travelling up hill was harder work than going down. My tongue was dry and rough, and I was very thirsty. I had noticed something warm and wet on my lips some time back and had paid no attention to it; but on putting my hand to my face I found it was blood running from cuts on my nose and chin, that I got from falling on the frozen snow.
I had travelled many miles by this time, and no sign of a human habitation. Was I travelling in a circle, as people do when they get lost, or still worse, had I lost my reason? It was well along in the morning, and the snow was getting softer with every step. In some places there was water under the snow. Two or three times I saw the river, and I must cross it somewhere; for the men said they were camped on the other side. Sometimes I stopped and called at the top of my voice. But only the deepest silence reigned over everything; not even a bird was to be seen. ; I suddenly came upon the bank of the river, •' eight or ten feet high and very steep. There was a cut in the snow which bore the prints of snowshoes that led down to the river. These I followed, but not far; for they lost the'mselves in a, pool of water a foot deep. Through this I waded, hoping to see the prints on the other side, but none were visible.
- My snowshoes were fast giving out and I had used up all the cord I had to mend them. I now kept the river, and after travelling about a mile, with great difficulty keeping on my snowshoes, and mending them several times, came to a beaten path that led up the bank through a small patch of brush, at the end of which the path vras wiped out as by magic. This magic w’as the sun.
I retraced my steps, and just as I got to the river again one of my snowshoes gave out entirely, so that my foot went through to the bottom and I had to take the snowshoe off. Then I tried travelling with one for a while, but that would not work. It was like travelling with a c cart with the wheels off on one side. Then I took them both off, and tried walking without '** , them, but this was still worse. Burying my face in my hands, I lay down in the snow and prayed that I might die where I was.
Then another idea occurred to me. I arose, placed one shoe before the other on the snow,• and slipped from one to the other, at each step bending down and reaching the shoe behind and placing it in front again. This was the crowning misery of the trip; and a kind Providence had so arranged it that in a short time I was able to reach a Hard path where I walked for some time without the need of snowshoes at all. The path disappeared at the edge of another long pool of ice-cold water that would have reached over the tops of my boots.
Not wishing to wade through this water. I cried, Halloo! although I saw no sign of a habitation of any kind. After calling five or six times I was so hoarse I was ready to give up in despair when I thought I heard a voice. I listened, and in a few seconds heard it asfain. I gathered all my strength, and called once more, which was promptly answered by a man’s strong voice, one of the party I sought.
He led me to the camp; and when I had gained a little strength, so that I could control my feelings enough to speak, I told him what had happened, in as few words as possible. This brought tears to his eyes and he said again, for the fourth or fifth time; “But, Lady, how did you get here? I can hardly believe it is you. How did you find us ? You must have come at least nine miles across a trackless wilderness.”
The men were very kind. One of them gave me his tent, while he found shelter outside. They provided me with food, clean clothing and the opportunity for a much-needed bath. As I changed my garments I found that I, too, was far advanced in an attack of scurvy, and within a day or two was unable to move except with assistance. The men inquired how I wished my husband’s body buried; I gave them the directions previously agreed upon between us and they went the next day and built his sepulchre, high in the tops of four pine trees, where his bones lie bleaching until the Judgment Day. Late at night they returned, bringing some of our goods with them.
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